Room air conditioning units are widely used in a variety of applications, including apartment buildings, office buildings and houses. Individual room units, when connected into a central heating or cooling system, offer the advantages of efficiency in heating or cooling the desired areas, and aesthetic and architectual efficiency in terms of modest space requirements and, in the case of vertical room units, ease of interconnection of units on adjacent floors throughout the building.
Vertical room air conditioning units as widely used in the prior art include an elongate cabinet or housing which extends substantially from floor to ceiling along a wall or in a corner of the room. The air conditioning components for the heating or cooling function are contained in the housing. In one type of unit known as a fan coil unit, a heat exchanger and a blower are provided. Air inlets and outlets are provided in the cabinet, so that the blower draws air through the inlet, forces it through the heat exchanger, and out the air outlet back into the room. The heat exchanger is in fluid communication with a source of heated fluid (usually water) in the case of heating operation, or cooled fluid, in the case of cooling operation. The heating or cooling fluid (depending on the season) is supplied from heating or cooling equipment which is remote from the room unit and which usually services a large number of such room units throughout the building. The heating or cooling fluid is supplied to the room units through vertical pipes, also called risers, which are positioned within the unit or are attached along the outside of the units, and which extend from floor to ceiling and therethrough to connect to the risers for room units in the adjacent floors above and below. The risers are connected into a circulating path for the heating or cooling fluid, and in each room unit taps or connections are provided to pass some of the fluid to the heat exchanger. Usually a thermostatic control is provided with each room unit to operate its blower or a valve controlling the connection of the heat exchanger to the risers.
Another type of room air conditioning unit uses heat pump, or reversible refrigeration cycle equipment within the individual room units. These type of units have a refrigerant, compressor, heat exchangers, and a blower to establish heat flow between the air in the room and the circulating fluid from the risers. Suitable controls are provided so that the unit can deliver heat to the room from the circulating fluid in the risers, or alternatively can remove heat from the room and apply it to the circulating fluid. This type of operation has the known advantages of allowing heating in some zones or areas of the building while simultaneous cooling is taking place in others, to accommodate different heating or cooling requirements in different zones of a building, for example in response to direct sunlight on some rooms.
Both types of units, fan coil and heat pump or reversible refrigeration cycle, use the same general type of cabinet, and while the improved cabinet of the present invention is shown applied to a fan coil unit, it is also applicable to heat pump units, as explained more fully later herein. As used herein, the term "air conditioning" is used in a broad sense to include conditioning of air by heating it, cooling it, or both. The present invention is applicable to units which are designed to provide heat only, cooling only, or either heating or cooling, whether by fan coil operation or reversible heat pump operation.
In a room air conditioning unit, the air conditioning components (heat exchanger, motor, etc.) generally take up less than half of the volume within the elongated cabinet, the remainder of the volume serving as a plenum or air duct for the room air that is drawn through the unit, passed through the heat exchanger, and returned to the room. The air conditioning components are usually mounted in the lower part of the cabinet for considerations of ease of servicing and also for structural considerations. This means that the upper portion of a vertical unit is basically empty. Because vertical room air conditioning units are full room height, they are somewhat bulky and take up a considerable amount of space during shipment and storage from the time they are manufactured until the time they are installed in a room. Their size and bulk also requires a considerable amount of packing material for shipment to adequately protect the panels from damage during shipment. Since the front and sides are finished and are visible and become part of the room decor in the final installation, great care must be taken in packaging of the units for shipment.